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I sent this message a couple of weeks ago but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere. 
 
Let me first say that I don't think that it is useful to equate "whig history" with
presentism or countra-presentism or with winners or losers by contemporary standards. In
any event, that is not the way I was using this term. Roy wrote: "Whig history is written
to demonstrate how the imperfect past has necessarily evolved to reveal us as the end-
product." I assume that his use of the term "imperfect" was not a redundancy and that "us"
need not refer exclusively to those members of the class of "us" who are contemporary
mainstream economists. It could refer to Post-Keynesian economists, for example. Moreover,
"us" need not refer to some professional group of economists at all. It may refer to the
standards set by a single economist, who claims that his ideas are more correct than those
of his contemporaries. Such a person can write a whig history by interpreting the writings
of others in terms of his own standards, like Keynes did when he wrote about the classical
economists. Finally, he need not be the "end-product" of anything more than his own
readings and thoughts, again like Keynes. After all, even historians of economics can be
original thinkers. Given these points, whig history, as I was using the term, refers to
histories with a much richer set of goals than glorifying or avenging by winners or
losers. It also refers to goals of improving, revising, redirecting, challenging, and even
revolutionizing economic thought by writers who may not, according to mainstream
standards, even be in the game.
 
Ross writes that he disapproves of whig history. He also writes that "[t]he standard for
judging a rational reconstruction is not the original author's position, but the
contribution the reconstruction makes to contemporary discussion." But contemporary
discussion may be wrong, off the track, or misguided in relation to past discussion. By
taking this view, Ross would presumably be led to disregard or disapprove a history of
economics written by an author who correctly argues that current (mainstream) discussants
have gone off the track because they disregarded a line of thinking that emerged in the
past but that they rejected. Consider an Austrian economist who can defend, with
reasonable argumentation, his claim (1) that Austrian economics, properly understood,
demonstrates that a large part of modern macroeconomics is flawed and (2) that current
Austrian economists do not properly understand the part of the subject matter that is
necessary to demonstrate this because they overlooked an important and revolutionary
contribution in the Austrian literature. Would Ross not disapprove of this or demand that
it rise to higher standards than articles that are concerned with what early writers wrote
specifically about issues that contemporary economists regard as fashionable?
 
Peter seems to agree with my view. He writes: "We read the classics not only because of
their value in itself, but because they are part of our extended present and thus can
improve our theoretical constructions..." He does not tell us what he means by "improve."
But presumably, he is not defining this term according to the standards of either the
winners, the losers, or contemporary economics. He seemingly has something else in mind.
He (as an historian of economics and not as editor of an Austrian journal) would not
disapprove of a paper of the type described above and would not demand that it rise to
higher standards.
 
The critical question in classifying historians of economics, it seems to me, is what
criteria an historian uses to make her judgments about which ideas and people to study and
in what ways. First, let us use the term "presentist" historian to refer to an historian
who implicitly endorses contemporary economics (the winners) in relation to the economics
of the past, without being concerned with whether contemporary economics is correct or
incorrect in relation to its predecessors or alternatives. The presentist implicitly
regards contemporary economics as correct but sees no need to prove this. The opposite of
this is a contra-presentist, who implicitly regards some part of contemporary economics as
incorrect and who writes about earlier writers who agreed with this. Next, let us use the
term whig historian to refer to one who endorses any particular idea or set of ideas as
being correct. By this definition, there is no place for a contra-whig. Finally let us
identify another class, the neutralist, one that is neither presentist nor "whiggist," in
these senses. A member of this class is neutral on the question of which ideas are more
correct than others. On what basis can he make judgments about which ideas and people to
study and in what ways? Among the possibilities: (1) he may be market driven, (2) he may
judge on the basis of the norms of the profession, (3) he may aim to please a patron, or
(4) he may write what he finds personally enjoyable, regardless of the social or economic
interest or consequences.
 
On this basis (i.e., on the basis of kinds of judgments they make), we might say that
there are three types of historians of economics: (1) pure presentists whose judgments are
based unquestioningly on the acceptance or rejection of contemporary economics (or of some
aspect of it); (2) whigs whose judgments are based on some particular set of criteria that
they believe enable them to distinguish correct ideas from incorrect ones; and (3)
neutralists. We could reduce the classes to (2) and (3) by including presentism as one of
members of the whig set. But a set that contained only (1) and (3) would be incomplete.
 
A final point. If this classification is accepted, then surely those who throw stones at
whigs live in glass houses. A neutralist has no way to judge whether his work contributes
to the progress of economics or to its regress. She can merely write that the work (a) is
not of interest to readers of this journal (it will not help sell the HES, for example),
(b) it is not relevant to mainstream economics, or (3) he (or his patron) doesn't like it.
 
 
By the way, for those who might be interested, I have recently revised my= 
 essay "What it Means to Be an Historian of Economic Ideas." 
 
http://www.gunning.cafeprogressive.com/subjecti/workpape/histidea.htm 
 
Pat Gunning 
 
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